Thinking, Feeling and Reflection on everyday’s life as an intellectual

From the ordeal of e-book to the nature of HKSAR governance

I had recently writing too much on Christian right, to the point that I almost forgot that I was once a FOSS activist, which I only criticize HKSAR for its colonial complex and entanglement of business interest and politics. Now there is yet another case to demonstrate the validity of my claim of ‘crony’ capitalism practice by HKSAR: Originally the e-book scheme proposed could reduce the cost of textbooks for many lower class parents, while stimulate the growth of creative industry: Programming and create a local ecosystem of knowledge workers and layperson expertise. However, in the name of free market and fairness in procurement, it devolve to the point where it is not longer affordable by not just lower class, but the lower end of middle class. What is happening?
Because once and again, HKSAR always has a heart for Big Business monopoly just like itself being a political hegemony. So the operating system of choice to run this scheme has switch from stable and free Linux which is free to modify and improve to Microsoft Windows system which has hundreds of software patent. Once HKSAR has chosen the stupid road of Intellectual Property in its local software development industry, those who can participate switch from tens of thousand of Netizen who barely made their ends meet to hundreds of certified Microsoft expert. And inevitably, the rich and knowledgeable only become richer and more knowledgeable; the poor and needy of knowledge in Age of Internet only become more deprave in terms of knowledge and money. Why?
In order to become a certified Microsogy expert like MCSE, one would have to be able to afford more than just a broadband Internet connection, but a computer with all latest and best hardware certified by Microsoft to be comparable, on top of the expansive but not so stable Windows-XP, plus a few suits of softwares like Visual Basic Studio along with Anti-Virus softwares. Beside, you can’t cooperate with your friends using this software since it is against the user license agreement that you can’t disagree. Then you got to pass MCSE and the like only to discover that the final decision whether developing such a software is feasible depends on:
A. Would you like your knowledge to be copyrighted(monopolize) by Microsoft(which is how they license the so-called ‘Wikipedia of music’)?
B. Would such a software hurt Microsoft’s future business plan?
So much investment in Microsoft that would made anyone become a partner in business interest of Microsoft.

In comparison, when this software is develop locally using Free and Open Source operating systems like FreeBSD/Linux. The cost is mostly to maintain your Internet connection and your computer working. Since Linux/FreeBSD doesn’t require the latest and best hardware certified by a convicted Big monopoly, nor you need a license agreement with Microsoft to utilize the patented software technologies of Microsoft. Most of your resource needed to develop e-book is freely available in the Linux/FreeBSD community of on the Internet. Plus you can use FOSS software to collaborate with your friends from all over the world legally and without cost. Certainly you don’t need any ‘approval’ from Linux/FreeBSD community, nor worrying about hurting the ‘business interest’ of LUGs. Beside, you can always make you and other Netizen’s contribution acknowledged by using one of the donzes license from Common Creative. How would such a software be qualitatively poorer than those who made by patented technologies, so to warrant HKSAR to choose Microsoft instead of FOSS alternative?

It is ridiculous and extremely backward to utilize the legal mechanism of copyright protection for protecting the intellectual property of textbook, since Netwon and Einstein never got a dime from the producers of Physics textbook. It is even worst when the prices of textbook has become prohibitively expansive for some parents in those few years at Hong Kong. In the Age of Information yet we still charge textbook by its content which also freely available in Wikipedia but not charge by its unique method for synthesis and organizing data into useful system of knowledge! What unique value that those textbook publisher produced in the process of making this textbook that no educator could thought of (in terms of teaching method), and what advance and latest knowledge that Netizen has no idea of? When a GPL technology is freely available for HKSAR to take advantage of, why doesn’t HKSAR to make the best out of it? Is that the idea of ‘I will get the job done’ of Donald Duck? Is that such a decision so hard to made, or a non-substainable oligarchies of Hong Kong would always perfer non-substainable policy over people’s long term development?

Living in HKSAR is great for all of us, since the citizen is always lightyear ahead of its Idoitic Government. I wonder if Donald Tseung is still reading ‘Dummy’s Guide to Governing’?